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ANJALI MODY
LONDON, MAY 8: NATO missiles rained down on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on Friday night killing at least four people and injuring more than 20. Among the dead was journalist Shao Yunhuan, of China's official news agency Xinhua. Agencies report that the Italian embassy was also damaged.Around 30 people were asleep inside the embassy building when it was hit. An unidentified Chinese diplomat is quoted as saying: ``I can't begin to tell you what it was like. This is a criminal act. They can see this is a completely residential area.''
NATO insisted that the Chinese embassy was not ``intentionally targeted''. BBC reports that the Chinese embassy was in fact targeted, because NATO strategists thought it was ``something else''. NATO spokesman, Jamie Shea, is reported to have said said the pilots mistook the building for a legitimate military target and then hit it with precision-guided weapons.The Chinese government's anger was unconcealed, in statement it said that it was ``barbaric attack a gross violationof Chinese sovereignty and the UN charter''. China's ambassador to the United Nations, Qin Huasan, at an emergency session of the Security Council, said that the attack was a ``crime of war'' which should be punished. He called on NATO ``to stop immediately its military actions so as to avoid further humanitarian disasters.''
Qin Huasan described as ``absurd'' NATO arguments that it had not committed a war crime under international law because it had not deliberately targeted the embassy. He asked: ``Are we to argue that a killer, merely by arguing that he did not commit the killing deliberately can escape the punishment of law?''
An angry crowd of more than 1,000 people in Beijing today attacked the US embassy with rocks, smashed up embassy cars and fought with police officers in protest, Associated Press adds.
China has summed US ambassador to lode ``strong protest'' against the bombing. The UN Security Council, summoned by China for an emergency meeting, said it was shocked and concerned by theattack.
NATO officials, however, have a set response to all such ``accidental'' hits.
NATO's press spokesperson Jamie Shea said: ``NATO did not intentionally target the Chinese Embassy. The wrong building was attacked. This was a terrible accident.'' He added that this would not stop NATO's campaign since its fundamental purpose was to stop ethnic cleansing and displacement of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the raids on Yugoslavia will go on despite the the damage to the Chinese embassy.
Peter Burleigh, the chief US delegate at the United Nations, insisted that Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for the events in Yugoslavia.
This cut little ice with Russia's UN ambassador, Sergei Lavrov who demanded: ``How many people must be killed, how many countries must be destabilised to punish one single person?'' He said that NATO's war was a ``cover-up'' and had nothing to do with trying to prevent a humanitarian risis.
Russia called the attack on the Chineseembassy a ``barbaric and inhumane act'' and, President Yeltsin asked Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to cancel his three-day visit to Britain in response to the attack. Apart from the tragic human consequences this strategic stupidity, the attack is colossal diplomatic blunder. One that NATO cannot expect to recover from easily. China has been opposed to NATO's war with Yugoslavia from the start. Negotiating support for NATO's peace package will be far trickier in this environment.
The attack on the Chinese embassy followed a daylight raid on Nis-- Yugoslavia's third-largest city -- in which 15 civilians were killed when a hospital and a market place were hit by what NATO described as a ``stray cluster bomb''. Questions about the conduct of this war, and NATO leaders' unwillingness to take any casualties on their own side have irked even those who support the war.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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